The difficulties that have plagued the Redondo Beach pier parking structure for half a decade reached a climax last Thursday night when the automated exit system broke down after a concert and 150 cars were essentially trapped inside.
One of those motorists was Councilman Steve Aspel, who is now leading the charge for a drastic change in how parking is handled at the pier. Aspel was stuck inside the parking structure for more than 40 minutes, an experience he described as “the nightmare of all nightmares” at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting.
“The irony, as a councilman – and I guess I am guilty of it myself – is that until I experienced it firsthand I wasn’t aware how bad it was there that time of night,” Aspel said. “It was beyond horrible. Needless to say, it is going to get corrected.”
It wasn’t the first breakdown of the parking system this summer but perhaps the worst. The traffic jam occurred around midnight after a concert by the Gin Blossoms let out from the music venue Brixton. The venue, which has a capacity of 450, was sold out for the show.
Brixton co-owner Adam Spriggs expressed frustration. He said the automated parking system – which requires people to pay at stations before entering their cars – has been problematic even when it isn’t broken down. Drivers frequently leave without knowing they need to prepay and create lines when they are unable to exit, Spriggs said. And the run-down condition of the 40 year old structure itself has proven a hurdle to many pier businesses.
“The cards are definitely stacked against us,” Spriggs said. “We are playing against the house, for sure…It’s hard enough to get people to come down to the pier, and the main thing is then you want to give people the best experience possible. Four to five hundred people took an hour to come to Redondo, and then for this to happen – it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”
“People were leaving saying, ‘I am not going back to the pier…We lost a little kindness that night,” Aspel said.
Councilman Steve Diels acknowledged that he sat on the council that in 2006 approved the automated system, which was initially operated by Five Star Parking but is currently by Ampco System Parking. He suggested the poor performance – and the fact that police had to come to disable the system, costing the city revenues – might allow the city to declare a breach of contract and send out new requests for proposal.
“What is our potential course of action?” he asked staff.
Harbor director Pete Carmichael said that the city could assess penalties but stopped short of saying that a breach of contract could be declared.
“I think what happened Thursday night does not bode well for the current operator,” Carmichael said.
Aspel was less circumspect. He said in an interview Wednesday that he wants the system fixed or the contract voided.
“As far as I’m concerned, they are in breach of the contract,” Aspel said. “If they can’t fix it, we can get rid of it.”
Representatives from Ampco were unable to be reached by press time.
In the short term, Aspel said he wants the upper parking structure opened for late nights. The council in recent years responded to noise complaints from the nearby condominium residents and closed upper pier parking after 10 p.m.
“That just goes to show you no good deed goes unpunished – we tried to do something good and it backfired,” Aspel said. “I’m going to bring up opening that upper deck again.”
The city in May formed a committee largely comprised of pier merchants to address pier parking problems. The committee is addressing both the structural design of the facility – which was built in 1970 and is near the expected maximum life of a parking garage – and its operational difficulties.
Carmichael said the committee would have recommendations for a new system by September.
“It’s a mess, and that’s why we are looking to reinvent it,” he said. “What happened Thursday is just another reason why we initiated this effort.”
Spriggs was somewhat leery of the solution-by-committee approach.
“Our damned government – you can have as many committees as you want, but you’ve got to fix the problem,” Spriggs said.
Aspel vowed that the city would move quickly on the issue.
“We’ve got to fix it, because parking is killing the pier,” the councilman said. “It’s worse than any rumor or innuendo about it being a bad place. No one can get out, and then people go and tell their friends what a mess it was and people won’t come back to the pier even for a hotdog. I’m not in a mood to wait for process on this – we’ve got to get it done, yesterday. It’s an embarrassment. We are driving people away. I don’t know how we can make pier parking right, but we will.”
